The real stories from inside the F1 paddock

Six hours after the race…

Formula 1 spent the weekend in Monte Carlo with Red Bull’s hopes of toppling the dominant Mercedes team dashed once again. But relations between Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton chilled somewhat after an incident in qualifying when Nico went off while Lewis was trying to grab pole. The yellow flags meant that Hamilton could not challenge. The race itself was a tense affair but once Rosberg got away at the start all Hamilton could do was follow. The win gives Rosberg the lead in the World Championship again…

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I assume Rosberg is now on every British journalist’s Christmas card list. Now, as Hamilton wins back the Championship, they can sell as it the noble Brit defeating the cold, calculating, heartless German.

I swear, some British F1 journalists are determined to make Rosberg seem completely unworthy of any success in F1 and that every point he takes away from Hamilton is a great injustice. Reminds of how Brazilian ink-stained wretches wrote about Senna against Prost or any other driver that dared challenge him.

If you could talk to drivers you would find a lot of them who reckon it was deliberate but won’t come out and say it publicly. So you do what you can do. Make it up as you go along and attack the media.

As you so often say Joe, it’s logical. Absence of proof or evidence is not evidence of absence (of intent by Rosberg). I wish more forum users and commentators had even a rudimentary understanding of logic and logical fallacies.
Having no close friends who are F1 fans I rely on places like your site for discussion, and I’m grateful that the standards (that you allow?) of your readers is generally better than most.

Is it possible for a driver to “beat” the telemetry? I know nothing about F1 telemetry but would be quite surprised if a driver could pull off a stunt like that and for it not to be obvious when anyone qualified and experienced looked at the data (i.e. driver’s steering wheel input led to the back stepping out, not the other way round.) Do you think it’s possible for an experienced driver to do this?

I felt it was deliberate. Rosberg drove flawlessly all weekend, are we to believe that he suddenly suffers a lock up once qualifying is winding down and he’s nabbed pole. Even if he didn’t know Lewis was up during the lap, he was just ensuring there was no threat to his result.

It can’t be too hard for a driver of Nico’s ability not to mention above average understanding of mechanics etc to go into a corner ‘just’ too hot. He’ll then genuinely need to use all his skill to stop it with as little damage as possible. An easier task if there’s an escape road handy.

When it comes before the stewards all the data will show is that he braked slightly later and therefore, probably, at a slightly higher speed. In other words exactly what a driver might do in the dying seconds if qualifying to try to shave a few hundreds off his time. Once he’s hit the brakes there’s noting the stewards will be able to see as odd. The only question is “why did he go into the bend faster?”
Of course it could be to deliberately beach the car but there’s no way of proving that and the driver will insist that he was just doing his job, trying to go faster, just on this occasion got it slightly wrong which isn’t a crime. Prove otherwise a you can’t. So the stewards have no option other than to acquit which gets us no closer to whether we have a genuine, honest error or a very clever driver. Unless he writes a ‘tell all’ Autobiography one day we’ll never know for sure but, well…cui bono and all that 😉

Apart from locking up at that corner several times in practice and in race, Lewis has stuffed it at that corner in 2011 as well as several other drivers over the years so I’m inclined to give Rosberg the benefit of the doubt as skulduggery is not something I’ve seen before from him. I’m not saying he absolutely didn’t just that he deserves the benefit of the doubt. Still wasn’t too impressed with Hamilton’s behaviour despite being frustrated, why shake his hand when cameras didn’t show it before race but refuse to congratulate him after the race in front of cameras, point finger at team about strategy then compare Merc to McLaren not sure what he thought that would achieve. Ah well its livening up the season anyway and its all good for the show

Joe, just reading your silly season story about Alonso and Domenicali and you mention him calling 3 drivers. I read elsewhere that was not in fact the case and the calls never took place. Apparently an interviewer either made up the story or it was lost in translation. Can you confirm whether or not Stefano did call or was called by those drivers? Thanks.

Can I also ask if you will be doing a feature or story about Lewis and Nico and their deteriorating relationship. It looks like it’s getting pretty fraught.

I’ve heard it all now!..why can’t he just admit that he could not catch or pass Rosberg.One of the attributes of a real winner is learning to lose with good grace! Sadly a quality missing in our Lewis. Maybe a few lessons from Button or Vettel would not go to waste

Perhaps Brendan sees in LH what I do. Rosberg aside, all I see in Lewis is a preening petulant figure who has been drawn into the vacuous chasm of celebrity culture. He’s achieved of course, but is off-track personality me itch. I wouln’t take lessons from Button or Vettel either, but at least they’re not vain.

I tend to agree Brendan. Although LH is obviously a very very good driver, and possibly the quickest over 1 lap as well as being an Ace in the wet, he does tend to be a bit Mansellish at times. I also have a soft spot for Nige, a great driver and Champ, but sometimes a little overdramatic.
All the conspiracy theorists are having a whale of a time with Nico, and his last qualy lap. However, is it not just possible that he thought he was going to make an error, and didn’t want to damage his car? The Stewards seemed to think this was the most likely situation, and I think it would be fair to leave it at that personally.
There is obviously some gamesmanship going on, and LH has been trying that on, while it appears that NR has been getting his head down and concentrating on the racing. All Hammy’s mind game work on Nico, supposing that NR wasn’t trying as he comes from a richer background, was rather stupid I thought, and not a little insulting to the Rosberg family too. As part of LH’s words of wisdom, referred to him travelling with the Rosberg’s on their private jet, and staying with them in Monaco, when he was younger. Given that the Rosberg family had obviously extended their time, home and facilities, to the poor young guy from Stevenage, it seemed a tad ungrateful to me, that Hammy was throwing it back at them and saying that their lad had been brought up too rich to be a winner! What a load of claptrap! If Hammy wants to play at mind games, he should speak to Alonso, who is a master of that area, and of doing it in a sophisticated manner.
Far better it would be just to get on with pure racing, and I hope both will do that from now on. It would also be better, and I would hope that MB insist on this from both drivers, that they act respectfully toward each other, offer congratulations on wins, and shake hands. Frankly, imho LH is demeaning himself, and his place in the pantheon of the sport, by not acting correctly.
As I said, one can’t knock him as a driver, and I would not for he is a great driver, but he could do with knocking the chips off his shoulders, and getting more adult, which at his age he should be by now! I also think he ought to drop the Mansell Book of Excuses in the bin, I found the eye problem a bit hard to accept, and Mansell used to also come out with some daft reasons for things not going his way, rather than just admitting that someone else was faster or did a better job, in an race. I know the modern era of sport demands that participants act in an adversarial manner toward each other, but personally I find it boring and irksome. One can interact in life without being dire enemies and to say otherwise is just sheer rubbish in my mind.

So he calls Nico a liar and he’s a petulant manchild, you call him a liar about his eye trouble and you’re the voice of reason? Yeah, I’m sure he’d find your advice on how to conduct himself valuable.

The gentle drivers people are referring to as examples of how to he should conduct himself, are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Lewis is being condemned for being without guile and duplicity. It seems F1 fans prefer deviousness to exist but not be acknowledged so they can lie to themselves that F1 is still the gentleman’s sport of years long gone.

Chesterton Robert, I’m not condemning LH as a driver, but he could do with getting a better attitude, and not always coming across as only happy when he is on pole and winning each time out. Sometimes another driver will just do a better job at qualy or in the race or in both areas. It’s life and he should just get on with it and accept that he is not a demi god or somesuch!
It is clear that LH has been trying mind games on Rosberg over the last couple of races. I don’t think NR did deliberately screw LH’s last qualy lap, however if Nico did do so, and did it really smart, then Lewis has only himself to blame for doing the boost up in Spain, and for relentlessly knocking Nico with stupid comments like ” he isn’t a hungry as me” ” silver spoon in his mouth”, ” not from a poor council flat like me” and so on. I don’t know who is feeding him his lines, but I find them irritating as a spectator, so how the drivers view it i don’t know, but they also must find it purile, and NR must find it rather offensive.
We had all this in the past, Mansell used to make up excuses for problems, Senna used to throw tantrums ( and punches ) if other drivers did not get out of his way, Prost used to undermine teammates and complain that they had a better engine or tyres or whatever, and Piquet used to bad mouth other drivers’ wives and so on. It was pretty awful in my view. I much preferred drivers like Berger & Alesi who let their talent talk for them, and behaved like gentlemen. Of course from that period on it became an obsession with sportswriters, to get sportspeople to create absurd feuds between each other, as this was deemed the only way that a sportsperson could reach their peak ability, and rise above the others. This is profoundly incorrect, and although you are entitled to view life this way if you wish, i think you are wrong to do so, and supporting such bad behaviour only helps it to thrive, whereas it should be stamped out as unnecessary and demeaning.
If you want to disagree, and want to say talent cannot be the only marker but bad manners have to be included, then i suggest you look back at those from the past who were hard but gentlemen racers including the recently passed Sir Jack Brabham, JYS, Ronnie Peterson, Gilles Villeneuve, Clay Reggazoni, Mario Andretti, John Surtees, Mike Hailwood, Johnny Herbert, David Coulthard and many many more. Sure Mansell, Prost ,Senna & Prost have become more respected with the passage of time, but when they raced they did not always have the total respect they would have had had they not indulged in petty minded mind games. Niki himself was the hardest of drivers, but always fair and he didn’t knock others, just outdrove them, and set his teams up to propel him over his team mate of any year.
That is how it should be done, not by school yard yobbery. It isn’t the case that we are different people these days, it should be the case that the sporting rules should promote proper regard for others. The stand out motorsport result of all time was Moss going to the Stewards to help Hawthorn keep his result and gain a WCD title that Moss would otherwise have won, and was more deserving of, as Moss had won more races that year. Moss said and has always maintained, that winning the title was less important than how you won it….i hope both Lewis & Nico would learn that.

As I said, years long gone, never to return. I still believe people want this duplicity to exist as long as they don’t have to acknowledge it. The criticism leveled at Lewis is based on his honesty and his inability to mask his true feelings. Even when he says nothing, it screams out. People prefer the Machiavellian behaviour of Alonso et al who will knife you in the back with a smile. I consider that behaviour much worse. Wait, you admire Alonso, don’t you….

Irony is he was innocent of the supposed offence but guilty of lying about not having done it. A ridiculous series of events mis managed by McLaren and certainly non of it caused by Lewis. So, a poor example all round.

Yes that’s true. Unless they were able to back off and squeeze another lap of that set they could be shot through. I’m sure something could be devised though. If 3 mins were added on after a short break while they remove the car it’d be enough for the other 9 drivers to put for a set of bonus tyres (available only in this circumstance) then do an out lap and one flying lap. It all gets a bit complicated I admit but I was really looking forward to the end of Quali on Saturday and felt a bit deflated when we were robbed of it, whether by an honest mistake or otherwise.

joe did you get to see the damage to KOB car after BIA crashed into him to get passed ?? i did & I saw it happen …KOB was luck to finishe the race !! I feel BIA muscled his way passed there with far too much contact …. those points are really Caterhams in my view..

Joe – I know I’m woefully naive about these things, but I’m sad to see Nico, who seemed from afar to be a good kid, indulge in Schmacher-esque behavior. I’m afraid I subscribe to Stirling Moss’ opinion that guys like Senna and Michael are top flight talents, but are not top flight men.

Have there been any F1 greats that you could stand to be around long enough to finish a pint?

I don’t know about “greats”, but among top F1 drivers, Michele Alboreto was one of the nicest guys I have ever met – and instantly got red mist once on track. Others – Ukyo Katayama, Patrick Tambay, John Watson, Webbo …

Joe-I do not really know where to post this, so here. I think you guys did an exceptional job on the Monaco edition of your magazine. I enjoyed greatly the tribute articles for Jack Brabham-the stories of the late 60’s and especially 1970…

The photos included from that era were particularly good-but so are the modern ones of these dramatic, amazing cars in this unique setting.

One of the articles in this issue correctly mentioned the genesis of the Caterham, Marussia, and HRT teams as being based on the 40m-60M “cost cap” plan, which then fell through. Please remember that the much-maligned USF1 team was also started on the promise of this budget cap. These teams deserve a better fate!